Moving In
From the time I graduated in May 2024 until September 2025, I was living at my parents’ house on Long Island. Thankfully, I have parents who were willing to have a 34-year-old around their house for a year. It wasn’t easy, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts; the commute was an hour and a half each way, but living in the city is expensive, and I needed to save money after graduate school. Now, I’m living in NYC.
After a year, I knew I needed to move out and into the city. While living at home was a great way to spend time with my parents and see my grandma on a weekly basis, I felt as if I wasn’t really living my life. I couldn’t do many things that I wanted to do because most of my time outside of work was reserved for the commuting.
I had been loosely looking at apartments since the spring, just to get an idea of prices and locations. I was hoping that I could live on my own, but studios do not go cheaper than $2,000 and I couldn’t justify paying almost half my monthly income on rent. As much as I wanted to live on my own, it was not financially affordable.
Other than the time spent living at home with my parents, I haven’t had roommates since Costa Rica in 2014, when I lived with two other English teachers. In Spain, I lived on my own in the three apartments I had. In Korea, I lived on my own and in grad school as well. Had I chosen to live with roommates, I could have cut my expenses in half. Part of me wishes that I had, but the other part is glad that I didn’t, because I loved my grad school apartment. It was the first time that I had all my art in one place and the first time I decorated my apartment how I wanted to. When I lived outside the U.S all the apartments came furnished.
Towards the end of this last summer is when I started seriously looking. I searched Craigslist (yes Craigslist, I thought maybe I could find a decent deal), Listings Project (a site with vetted, high-quality listings), Leasebreak, and Facebook Marketplace. I didn’t even know you could browse Facebook marketplace for room listings, but I happen to come across a few while browsing furniture. Ultimately, I had the most success with Facebook marketplace. I never heard back from anyone on any of the other sites, but I ended up touring three apartments from people I reached out to on Facebook and ultimately settling on the one I’m currently living in.
The first apartment
The first apartment I saw was in SoHo and was amazingly located at an affordable price of $1400. It would have been with one roommate, but there was no common area. The kitchen was off the hallway and there wasn’t even enough room for a table. The bedroom that I would have been renting was off the kitchen via a telescopic sliding door, and with a full bed it didn’t have enough room for any other seating. I think it was a true studio converted into the current setup of a two-bedroom apartment. The bedroom needed a single bed for that space so you could put a chair and a small table. It was a perfect place for someone young who was always going to be out of the apartment, but what happens come winter? There was no place to chill.
The second apartment
The second apartment was in Long Island City, a place I never imagined I would end up living. Still, it seemed like a decent place and I could imagine myself getting a bike and biking the 30-min to work. It was a 3-bedroom, 2 bath apartment, with one of the baths belonging to the room I would have rented. The bedroom was big and had a good-sized closet and great natural lighting from a floor to ceiling window. However, there was no shared living space other than the kitchen and it had no windows.
The guy who showed it to me was relatively nice. I didn’t meet the other girl, but I was ready to get out of my parents’ house and seriously considered moving into the apartment after I had seen it. Following the visit, he added us to a group text to introduce us, but the other roommate never responded. The next day, I told him that I was backing out, I didn’t get a good vibe from the other roommate. He apologized and a few days later, I saw him renting his room on Marketplace too. I guess I made the right choice.
The third apartment
The third apartment, and the one I’m currently living in, is in Bed-Stuy, right next to Pratt. It’s on Lafayette, a street I walked down every day from Atlantic Terminal (in the opposite direction) to get to work. It’s a 22-minute walk to the office and right next to the Bedford-Nostrand G subway line.
It’s in the perfect location for my current job, cutting my commute from an hour and a half to just 22 minutes, with easy access into Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Manhattan. It’s also an easy 20-minute subway ride to my sister’s apartment in Tribeca and anywhere else I may need to go. Every apartment I looked at she Google mapped the distance to her apartment. The SoHo one would have been the closest, but this one isn’t too much further.
On top of that, when I met my now roommate, we immediately had a lot in common. He’s vegan, I’m vegetarian. He has been going to salsa every Tuesday at the Y, I’ve been salsa dancing for years. He likes board games; I like board games. The apartment was clean and neat and I’m a neat person. He also has a 13-year-old Lhasa Apso and my family had a Shih Tzu (a lot of people think his dog is a Shih Ttzu). After I saw the apartment, he had somebody else viewing it right after me. Later that afternoon, when I thanked him and told him I’d love to be roommates, he offered me the room.
Living with a roommate
Living roommate has been an adjustment. The living with someone else part specifically. I’m older and more particular about certain things than when I lived with roommates in Costa Rica.
The biggest adjustment was shifting my mindset to seeing the apartment as our space, rather than his space. He has lived there for over three years, so it was already fully furnished with his things and decorated in a way different from how I would have done it. But not so different that I mind. Not only that, but there are clearly specific ways in which he does or puts things. He also works from home every day, so he’s in the apartment a lot more than I am. I try my best to be mindful of the differences in how we might go about doing something, especially since most of these things aren’t a big deal.
Overall, living with him has been great. We like similar things, so we’ve been doing things together like going to salsa on Tuesdays at the Y, playing board games and watching some shows or movies. He’s respectful, makes me feel comfortable in the apartment and is good at communicating, which is definitely an important quality when you’re living with someone you didn’t know beforehand.
We also have different morning schedules, so we’re not in each other’s way. I’m out the door by 8:30 after either going to the gym or running in the morning and he’s still sleeping, so it works perfectly.
If you think about it, living with a stranger as a roommate is kind of a daring thing to do. Two people who don’t know each other sharing the same space. I imagine it could go very poorly. People often say that in a relationship it is important to live with someone before getting married and that’s after you’ve presumably been dating for years. When you live with a stranger, you may have met them only once or twice before. In my case, only once.
In my case it takes 8 to 20 minutes by car between home and work. It’s a blessing for me not to waste a long time on commuting. Nice reading, mate! Take care!